Posts tagged RSS Aggregator

The more high quality content there is out there on the net, the more time we busy teachers end up spending clicking from one page to another to see if the content has been updated. Anything new at the B.B.C. Learning English site? Anything new on Nik Peachey’s great blog? What about the Webheads technology & teaching group, I wonder if anyone’s replied to my question yet? We can spend ages just clicking around just to see if our favourite content has been updated.

Does this sound familiar to you? Then you should be using an RSS feed reader. It will save you wasting time checking for updated content and allow you to focus on finding good new materials for your students (or simply checking your personal email or the latest sports scores too!) RSS readers work by “pulling in” any new content from all the sites you want to follow and presenting them all together in one place for you to read when you’re ready.

Here is a great video Common Craft made last year about RSS and why we should use it:

I do love the way Common Craft manage to explain things in such a simple way 🙂

There are heaps of good RSS readers out there like Bloglines,Pageflakes, or even you own web browser Like Firefox or modern versions of Internet Explorer. Personally I use iGoogle which includes the Google Reader RSS aggregator, not because it’s any better or worse than the others, I just like how it works.

I have set iGoogle to be my homepage at work and at home. Now as soon as soon as I log on to the internet I can check my mail, check the RSS feeds from Nik, The Webheads and The BBC, as well as checking the latest news and sport headlines all from one quick page. Very handy!